Hi - all this talk on maths levels has got me thinking about what DS6 is up to. I've always considered his strengths to be reading/spelling, verbal etc but the last few days have really got me wondering. He has been off school again (another allergy episode!) and to get him to take a break from the computer/tv etc I asked him if wanted to look at the maths books that he was given last year (I thought they would be too hard for him).

There was a year 3 and year 4 book which are Australian written and on it stated for ages 8/9 and 9/10 respectively. Well I flicked through the yr3 book and thought no way - he's done harder than that on the computer so started the yr4 book - it started off quite basic add 10 to a list of figures, add 100, minus 10 etc, then there was 2 pages with rows and columns of numbers and he had to pick out all the multiples of 3 and then 4. I thought this would be a bit more of a challenge but wow he sped through it in seconds. OK on a roll... move on, the next section was factors, after I churned the wheels back a few (ok lots) of years I explained to DS how to work out the factors - again wow - out of about 50 numbers he failed to get 1 factor on 2 of the numbers. We went on to do perimeters and areas which he said he'd never done before and he whizzed through it in seconds. Even the speed he did the mental calculations impressed the h... of me.

Should I be impressed or in your experiences is this pretty basic stuff for a gt 6yr8mo old? And should I be taking more interest in the maths side - I knew he could do long multiplication and division and knows his times tables but had no idea what this meant in age terms (on the back of these books it has year 4/5 times tables = age 10/11 - really do they not learn all their tables till this age?) Hearing all the comments on here is making me a little nervous now - its true what they say about ignorance...